The Literary Remains | Page 2

aught else than a specious name for wilful positiveness;--as if the Father of Lights could require, or would accept, from the only one of his creatures whom he had endowed with reason the sacrifice of fools! Did Coleridge, therefore, mean that the doctrines revealed in the Scriptures were to be judged according to their supposed harmony or discrepancy with the evidence of the senses, or the deductions of the mere understanding from that evidence? Exactly the reverse: he disdained to argue even against Transubstantiation on such a ground, well knowing and loudly proclaiming its utter weakness and instability. But it was a leading principle in all his moral and intellectual views to assert the existence in all men equally of a power or faculty superior to, and independent of, the external senses: in this power or faculty he recognized that image of God in which man was made; and he could as little understand how faith, the indivisibly joint act or efflux of our reason and our will, should be at variance with one of its factors or elements, as how the Author and Upholder of all truth should be in contradiction to himself. He trembled at the dreadful dogma which rests God's right to man's obedience on the fact of his almighty power,--a position falsely inferred from a misconceived illustration of St. Paul's, and which is less humbling to the creature than blasphemous of the Creator; and of the awless doctrine that God might, if he had so pleased, have given to man a religion which to human intelligence should not be rational, and exacted his faith in it--Coleridge's whole middle and later life was one deep and solemn denial. He believed in no God in the very idea of whose existence absolute truth, perfect goodness, and infinite wisdom, were not elements essentially necessary and everlastingly copresent.
Thus minded, he sought to justify the ways of God to man in the only way in which they can be justified to any one who deals honestly with his conscience, namely, by showing, where possible, their consequence from, and in all cases their consistency with, the ideas or truths of the pure reason which is the same in all men. With what success he laboured for thirty years in this mighty cause of Christian philosophy, the readers of his other works, especially the Aids to Reflection, will judge: if measured by the number of resolved points of detail his progress may seem small; but if tested by the weight and grasp of the principles which he has established, it may be confidently said that since Christianity had a name few men have gone so far. If ever we are to find firm footing in Biblical criticism between the extremes (how often meeting!) of Socinianism and Popery;--if the indisputable facts of physical science are not for ever to be left in a sort of admitted antagonism to the supposed assertions of Scripture;--if ever the Christian duty of faith in God through Christ is to be reconciled with the religious service of a being gifted by the same God with reason and a will, and subjected to a conscience,--it must be effected by the aid, and in the light, of those truths of deepest philosophy which in all Mr. Coleridge's works, published or unpublished, present themselves to the reader with an almost affecting reiteration. But to do justice to those works and adequately to appreciate the Author's total mind upon any given point, a cursory perusal is insufficient; study and comprehension are requisite to an accurate estimate of the relative value of any particular denial or assertion; and the apparently desultory and discontinuous form of the observations now presented to the Reader more especially calls for the exercise of his patience and thoughtful circumspection.
With this view the Reader is requested to observe the dates which, in some instances, the Editor has been able to affix to the notes with certainty. Most of those on Jeremy Taylor belong to the year 1810, and were especially designed for the perusal of Charles Lamb. Those on Field were written about 1814; on Racket in 1818; on Donne in 1812 and 1829; on The Pilgrim's Progress in 1833; and on Hooker and the Book of Common Prayer between 1820 and 1830. Coleridge's mind was a growing and accumulating mind to the last, his whole life one of inquiry and progressive insight, and the dates of his opinions are therefore in some cases important, and in all interesting.
The Editor is deeply sensible of his responsibility in publishing this Volume; as to which he can only say, in addition to a reference to the general authority given by the Author, that to the best of his knowledge and judgment he has not permitted any thing to appear before the public